One More Day
by Legendary Armor
Summary: M!Courier/Arcade Gannon. A collection of short ficlets.
1. Chapter 1

_[arcade]_

* * *

_"...Sometimes you try your hardest, but things don't work out the way you want them to."_

His mother had said them as a comfort, decades before. They sounded hollow and empty even then, spoken through a voice raw from sobbing and anguish. Now they served only to haunt him in quieter moments, any time he stopped and spent too much time remembering.

The grave he stood in front of wasn't hers, or his father's. It didn't belong to anyone he'd really known; another civilian he couldn't do enough for. But the failure was still there; the hole had still been dug, a body too young put away in a ground already littered with tombstones.

He unclenched his hands, cold with sweat, and turned to walk away - back to the Old Mormon Fort, back where he didn't belong. But that was the rub, wasn't it?

Arcade didn't really belong anywhere at all.

He was a pretender, a lie, a charade in a lab coat hardly doing anything more than watching the days idle by. Sometimes you try your hardest - but by his token, he wasn't even trying at all.


	2. Chapter 2

_[arcade, the courier]_

* * *

"Your father was a ranger?"

Isaac smiled, but it was devoid of mirth. His eyes were sad and far away. "Yeah. My ma was an NCR field medic, too."

Arcade watched the courier, who had his gaze firmly on the floor. Their knees barely touched as they sat side-by-side on the old couch. "Past tense?" he asked carefully.

He ran a gloved hand through his hair and sighed. "Dad died at the big Hoover Dam fight a few years back. Ma took a bullet in the head a couple years before that in a skirmish with the Legion." The smile came back, raw and full of bitterness. "Two of many reasons I'm not a big fan of the gentleman across the river."

"...I'm sorry." The Follower reached over to pat Isaac's shoulder in a comforting, if awkward gesture. _What do you even say to that?_

Isaac just shrugged, though, and flashed the doctor his signature smile, tinged with only a little pain. "We've both lost good people. Just gotta do our best to make the Mojave a little brighter for those that come after us, right?"

Arcade nodded, and passed the wine bottle. An NCR kid fighting for independence - he wasn't the only black sheep in the Mojave. Isaac took a long, long draw; when he leaned his head against Arcade's shoulder, the doctor closed his eyes and took another drink of his own.

It wasn't peace, but it was a start.


	3. Chapter 3

_[arcade, the courier]_

* * *

"It'll take a lot more than that to kill me."

Arcade tsked angrily as Isaac leaned against the doorframe of the shack, casual and composed. Blood covered nearly half of his face, and a tiny trail led out to the hallway behind him; some of his short, ginger hair was dark with crimson and dirt from the gash just below his hairline.

"Maybe you should tempt fate a little less, and let me shove a few stimpaks in your head before you break it again. Oh, and maybe don't try blocking projectile weapons with your face anymore. Just a _suggestion_."

The courier's lips quirked up in the smallest of smiles as Arcade came at him with a damp cloth, patting at the deep gash on the side of his forehead. "Sorry. Didn't mean to make you worry."

"I'm not _worried_," the Follower snapped back.

"Okay." He stood there, quiet and at ease as Arcade cleaned his wound, watching him work; he was so close he could see the exact shade of green the doctor's eyes were, brighter even than his own. "I'm glad you're not hurt," he said quietly.

Arcade paused, the irritation fading from his expression, just a little. "Yeah. Thanks. I just..."

"Don't worry about it." He brought a hand up to the doctor's cheek, brushing his thumb softly along his jaw. Arcade blinked at him, unbalanced and confused. "A spear to the head is worth you still being here to be mad at me for using my face as a shield."

Arcade called him something that sounded particularly unflattering in Latin and continued cleaning the injury, but he smiled, just a little, despite himself.


	4. Chapter 4

_[arcade, the courier]_

* * *

_No._

The Fiend's smile was cruel as he stood over the broken, lifeless body. Isaac didn't know his name. He didn't want to. It didn't matter. "What's it to you, anyway?"

The silence lasted one, two, three seconds; the crazed man took a step forward and growled. "Talkin' to you! You listenin'? You wanna _die_?" Arcade noted the way the courier's hand twitched, the grip on his revolver tightening. _Got a feeling this won't end well._

Isaac couldn't see the woman's face. But her hair - her hair was the same color, the same length, that his mother's had been. And she was - _had been_ - young, with her whole life ahead of her. Maybe with a family.

Maybe with a son.

But this... this _pathetic sack of shit_ had killed her, without remorse, had stolen her future and had taken her away from anyone that might've missed her. Isaac tried to steady his ragged breaths, his pounding heart. He didn't know her name. He didn't want to.

It didn't matter.

"Isaac?" Arcade's whisper sounded too loud even to him, his heartbeat speeding up in the tense silence... when suddenly, the courier made his move.

His revolver was firing between one breath and the next; he emptied an entire clip into the junkie's face as quickly as he could pull the trigger. Arcade didn't even have time to level his own weapon - the Fiend certainly didn't, either. The smell of gunpowder and lead hung heavy in the air with six rounds emptied into his skull - but Isaac didn't stop. As the body fell to the floor, he lunged forward to straddle the corpse, and swung his weapon down onto the mess of a head, over and over, his attacks getting heavier with each blow, covering him in gore-

"Isaac, stop - snap out of it! _Isaac_!"

Strong arms pulled him back from the body; he struggled for a moment, but quickly ceased. He blinked a few times, dazed, before his shoulders slumped; Arcade let him go, and he sat cross-legged on the ground, silent and unmoving.

The Follower gingerly took a seat beside him. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

He didn't meet his companion's eyes, too caught up in memories and regret. "...No. But I will be."

_Why'd I let myself lose it so bad?_ He was disquieted - as violent as their lives had been, he'd never fallen into any kind of madness like that before. Maybe it was just the stress of the last few months. Maybe it was the tension of the looming war at the Dam. He didn't know. He didn't want to.

It didn't matter.


End file.
